The Liberal Party is still beholden to a small cohort of angry men. Women have had enough

This election, I believe, we had the highest calibre of female Liberal candidates ever. Unfortunately, they were forced to sell a shit sandwich.

Hope for these impressive candidates diminished quickly as the campaign weeks rolled on and the party, devoid of policies that appealed to women and with a brand that seemed repellent to them, stumbled towards defeat.

Voters think that, if they vote for Liberal women, those candidates won’t go into parliament and be vocal allies of women. Credit: James Brickwood

Now the party is at death’s door; state, federal and structural quotas, as well as a women’s policy advisory board to the leader, should be the absolute bare minimum. Every one of the MPs throwing their hats in the ring for leader of the party should be tenaciously hounded about their stance on quotas for women and their plans for reform. But even that might not be enough to hold on to Liberal women who have been lied to and dismissed, time and time again.

I am sure the media will begin asking the handful of Liberal women who remain in parliament if they support quotas. They should be asking the men instead because it is their responsibility to fix this too. Their own electability relies on it. If women do stick their necks out and speak in favour of quotas, they are likely to jeopardise their own preselection with a membership allergic to the “Q” word.

Our party membership is a colossal part of the reason that we face oblivion. While the average Australian is a 37-year-old woman, our average party member is a male in his 70s. Our party membership is just 0.0029 per cent of Australia’s population. That sounds fringe. Unless we can change the preselection process to include the broader community, we are failing to address the confirmation bias of our membership.

If the party continues to pretend that we simply have a disproportionate number of men because they have more “merit”, if we continue to feed culture wars and anti-climate rhetoric and pander to an ageing (and dying) generation over-represented in our membership, then we can’t be surprised that votes are rapidly drying up. Simply, the more energy we put towards policy that placates the party membership, the more we will repel broader society.

All the Liberals’ men: Peter Dutton in the Liberal party room with photos of past leaders, all of them men.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

If we fail to overhaul the entire party now, this is the end. We will continue to be beholden to a smaller and smaller cohort of angry men, blinded by their own ideology, so detached from reality that we will never be in power again. If the takeaway from this election is that we didn’t win because we were “Labor-lite” or because we “didn’t go far enough to the right”, we are truly, truly deluded.

For our democracy to thrive, Australia now needs a strong centre-right conservative party to hold the government to account. If we can’t be that home for centre-right women, but continually obstruct their efforts to contribute, we can only blame ourselves when they decide to build a new house.

The whole point of having more women in the party room isn’t to tick a box. It’s to have a variety of views at the table. From this campaign, it was evident there were not enough women involved in the sound-boarding process. We lost votes because of it.

Hilma’s Network was established three years ago, after the Scott Morrison election defeat, in a bid to repair the relationship between the party and women. We quickly amassed a database of thousands of Liberal-minded women and hosted sold-out events across the country.

When it rains: Liberal Party deputy leader Sussan Ley is one of only six Liberal women in the House of Representatives.Credit: Eddie Jim

I was hopeful that Peter Dutton would tailor some policies towards women. On five occasions across the last term I asked for a meeting with him to share some of the insights I was getting from women. I was rejected every time. While his staff would meet me, it was clear it wasn’t a priority for Dutton himself.

Unsurprisingly, the lack of effort was reciprocated by female voters at the ballot box.

Now, even when we do preselect formidable female candidates, voters think they must have a form of Stockholm syndrome. The 2022 Hume Loughnane review into the last Liberal election loss found: “Liberal defectors in teal seats were highly likely to agree with the statement that ‘the treatment or attitude toward women within the Liberal Party had a strong influence on my vote’.” Voters clearly think that, if they vote for Liberal women, those candidates won’t go into parliament and be vocal allies of women.

This election, the leader of the opposition and the campaign headquarters failed to lift a finger to challenge this perception, thus cementing the narrative that Liberal women are “crumb maidens” who will put up with anything for a pat on the head. This damaged many of our female candidates.

But it was our failure to produce any policy that spoke to women that was most mortifying. Our policy and messaging on work from home and the failure to acknowledge how hard women’s lives already are, without lumping them with more, was nothing short of abhorrent. It brazenly highlighted that the party was still disconnected from the everyday lives of women.

Liberal women have been promised on so many occasions before that the party is ready to address its systemic and cultural flaws and evolve, but we have been left red-faced and frustrated when an election comes around and the same issues repeat themselves: lack of women preselected, lack of women promoted from within, lack of policy created for women. It’s rinse and repeat. Why would we stay around for another three years, leading lambs to the slaughter and promising fresh women that the party is ready to evolve when history tells us otherwise?

After the last election defeat, in 2022, the Liberal Party had its worst result in 30 years for female representation. I thought that was scorched earth and there was no option but to reform. Yet, we didn’t. And now, here we are again.

The party should have implemented quotas after that 2022 loss, but we opted for targets again (even though we failed the target we had made in 2015). Now we have just a handful of women in the House of Representatives.

As Liberal MPs begin counting numbers for the party leadership, they should consider that the fastest way to regain trust and show they’re truly ready for reform is by doing something they’ve never done before: appointing two women as party leader and deputy.

Charlotte Mortlock is the founder of Hilma’s Network, and a former Sky News anchor.

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